How do you define how long it should take to do something in the world of Pantheon?
I know in pencil and paper role-playing like D&D it can take a whole game session just to get to a new location and prepare. Secure a location to sleep and store your extra gear. Talk to the locals, gain knowledge about the area. Deicide what your want to explore. Buy your essential supplies for what you think will need for your adventure. Prepare for your adventure. It was fun, because if you did it right, your Dungeon Master would allow for more creativity in your tactics, because you had the spells or items needed to carry out the strategy and tactics you proposed. Preparing and scheming was half the fun. I enjoyed my Candle Caster but I had a lot of gear and needed to craft and enchant my candles. We had to prepare to be effective.
In Pantheon how long should it take to explore a region / dungeon? If there is a town in the area, should you seek out accommodations? Find a bind point. Store your extra gear somewhere. Seek our more information from the locals. Explore the area to discover more about region / dungeon you plan on adventuring in.
If perception and horizontal systems are in place, can I gain an advantage by find a key, learn of a secret entrance? Find a letter that lead to an obscure quest that ends learning a new skill or ability. Maybe the region is so large you need to come back at level 20 and 30 even 40 to actually learn and conquer all the secrets of the region.
At a time where world content is so expensive and time consuming to make. Where studios put out cheap content because it’s all they can do to keep up, because they designed the virtual world that moves the character through it too fast. Our characters are not deep and level up way to fast, and come away feeling empty. Isn't the real answer is to design a world from the ground up, that moves a little slower
I don’t want to be done with a area in 4 levels. How long should the process of “being on an adventure take”? If VR does create real world with a high level of detail that take some real time and nuance to learn all the mysteries of the world. Leveraging the horizontal and perception systems, how much should things slow down to get back to what makes adventuring fun?
This is a really good topic and question. And I think that the answer is always going to be context-dependant.
In my opoint of view, it should be very rare to ever be "completely done" with an area of the game or it's content. You might go away for a while to other places, until you find yourself drawn back there for some purpose - but when you do come back, there's more to discover or experience still.
Nephele said:...the answer is always going to be context-dependant.
This is the correct answer for so many topics people bring up. It all depends upon context! Trying to lock down a definitive number for some activity while not taking into all the variables is just bad thinking and will never give you an answer you want.
But this is a discussion topic so I'll discuss this.
I look at a racial city, take Thronefast, and would like to see it have a level of depth and complexity such that visiting every building, checking for fake walls, hidden entrances or secret passages, hailing every NPC to check for quests, checking every bit of merchant inventory to see pricing, finding every tradeskill tool (forges, etc) should take me several real days. I want each city to be a living, breathing, complex environment filled with activities, actions and secrets...things with which I can interact or be impressed by.
The longer some activity takes, I see that as proof the developers put more time, energy and thought into its creation. So the more time the developers put into something the more time we should be required to expend to fully experience it. Cheap fast content is quickly experience and even more quickly forgotten.
Many see some activities as a waste of time. Travel usually one of those. "I need to get from A to B fast" without thinking about the reality of why A and B are so far from each other. Would it stand to reason a dangerous dungeon would exist right near a major city? No..the inhabitants would have wiped that dungeon clean ages ago to keep their citizens safe. This means that those places which are still dangous will, naturally, be very far away from civilization. The citizenry does also see a need to put a teleport location anywhere near such a place as they have no reason to do so. It exists far beyond their borders and has no effect upon their lands.
So travel is part of the equation along with risk and reward. The three need to all be in balance.
Caine said:How do you define how long it should take to do something in the world of Pantheon?
I think the answer to this is why the devs are up late at night, consuming really scary amounts of energy drinks and coffee and why they get the big bucks. There's a lot more to this question because time and the enjoyment of it are why games exists in the first place. We want somewhere to go and something to do that we can enjoy and get our minds off the stresses and grind of the real world. We want something where we can make a difference, even if just in small ways. What you're asking is a delicate balancing act. Should it take as much time to get that next level as it does to invade a raid dungeon and stop the pending onslaught of revenant forces? Should it take more? Should it take less? How about tradeskills? Should they take more or less of our most valuable commodity to get all of our recipes than adventuring?
Based on what I've read and watched, Pantheon will be slower on progression in all forms than the typical MMO, and we will be much more interdependent. That alone is encouraging. To your point about taking a whole game session preparing for your adventure, I think we'll get that. Maybe not exactly in the same way as pen and paper, but things will be slow enough so we can take in more of the world around us before we outlevel it, thus, enjoying the journey. And that is my answer. It (whatever it is) should take long enough so that we can take in as much as possible before it's time to move on.
Regen and TTK are both faster than Launch-Era EQ1 already. /shrug They haven't confirmed the regen values are 'correct' or 'appropriate' or 'working as intended' yet, though, so I suppose they can invalidate adjust that after all the testing data with it in place as been gathered. :)
TTK seems about right, though for noobs in noob gear.
I see alot of debates about time sink issues. (i.e. Travel, TTK, corpes runs, day/night cycle, leveling)
Many people end up here because they are tired of playing MMOs that are not working for them. Games like FPSMMOs aka Destiny, that are called a MMO, but there is no player trading or markets and are really void of the community experience. Or ESO's Dungeons where you don't even get to enjoy the dungeon your in, and don't socialize because of the fast pace action. Time is compressed because it more a console game feel, but they try to call it a MMO, and those that don't know any better, begin to call it that. Then that becomes the new normal. The concoction of MMO and Console platform has really distorted things.
So then the concept of Time in MMORPGs is now distorted. Before you can actually debate how long it take to do something in Pantheon, you must set the premise and type of MMO it is. there really need to be a scale of sorts to frame the debate, before actually debate "time" in game.
Turbo - action/MMO Fast - Console MMORPG Slow - PC Social MMORPG
|----------------------------------------|---------------------------------------|
^ ^ ^
Destiny ESO EQ
Day/ Night cycle - How long should it take to cycle 12 hours of ingame time.... 1 hour = 12 hours?
Caine said:Day/ Night cycle - How long should it take to cycle 12 hours of ingame time.... 1 hour = 12 hours?
I would love to see a day/night cycle be 1 hour for each. This way if the average playtime on any given night is 2 hours, you get to experience 1 day and 1 night before you log out. I could go a s low as 45 mins for each but anything faster than that is just too quick, for me anyway.
EQ1 had a 1:20 ratio where 1 real minute represented 20 game minutes., or 3 minutes per 1 game hour. So a day was 24 real minutes, 48 real minutes for a full day/night cycle.
Two opposite considerations come to mind.
With adventuring working differently during the day and at night at least to some extent - you do not want time to cycle too quickly. You want time to find and deal with night encounters, for instance, not have the night flicker past you in 30 minutes or an hour.
But if you are dealing with NPCs you also do not want the night to be too long. Few things are as annoying to me as would be getting to a town just after sundown and not being able to do any of the buying, selling, training, getting quests, cashing in quests, etc. that I went there to do for four hours real time until the Pantheon sun rises. I know not everything will shut down but some things will - and Murphy dictates that these will be the things I want most.
Slow travel exacerbates this - there will be a limited number of other things I *can* do within a reasonable travel distance unless I leave the area entirely which I may not be ready to do.
dorotea said:Two opposite considerations come to mind.
With adventuring working differently during the day and at night at least to some extent - you do not want time to cycle too quickly. You want time to find and deal with night encounters, for instance, not have the night flicker past you in 30 minutes or an hour.
But if you are dealing with NPCs you also do not want the night to be too long. Few things are as annoying to me as would be getting to a town just after sundown and not being able to do any of the buying, selling, training, getting quests, cashing in quests, etc. that I went there to do for four hours real time until the Pantheon sun rises. I know not everything will shut down but some things will - and Murphy dictates that these will be the things I want most.
Slow travel exacerbates this - there will be a limited number of other things I *can* do within a reasonable travel distance unless I leave the area entirely which I may not be ready to do.
I believe the answer to boat travel (slow travel) is to take advantage of the down time to buy and sell stuff - right there on the boat to other players or a NPC, or put an item on consignment for the NPC to sell, after 24 hours the items get distrubuted to the ports cities NPC vendors. Combine boat travel and the buying and selling, it solves some of the player's time constraints.
Good topic and something I have been thinking about as well. Yes, context is key here (ie. depends on the task in question), but if we zoom out a bit I think, as players, there will need to be an adjustment to a more mindful mentality when approaching Pantheon.
As you stated well Caine, “So then the concept of Time in MMORPGs is now distorted. Before you can actually debate how long it take to do something in Pantheon, you must set the premise and type of MMO it is. there really need to be a scale of sorts to frame the debate, before actually debate "time" in game.”
Even those of us calling for a slower, deeper MMORPG experience, will need to make a concerted effort as a player to embrace this approach. We will need to deprogram ourselves from the speed of this generation of MMOs. Not only have we been conditioned for a faster experience, also for instant gratification in MMOs. Time invested and value attained have virtually no connection anymore.
This means being in the moment of the game. Talk to your friends, your group, your guild while doing something that takes time (eg. travel) Remember when you were camping a spawn back in EQ? How did we pass the time? So, as is the theme with Pantheon, community is key. I suspect this is the premise that underlies any time scale decisions being in game design.
Therek said:Good topic and something I have been thinking about as well. Yes, context is key here (ie. depends on the task in question), but if we zoom out a bit I think, as players, there will need to be an adjustment to a more mindful mentality when approaching Pantheon.
As you stated well Caine, “So then the concept of Time in MMORPGs is now distorted. Before you can actually debate how long it take to do something in Pantheon, you must set the premise and type of MMO it is. there really need to be a scale of sorts to frame the debate, before actually debate "time" in game.”
Even those of us calling for a slower, deeper MMORPG experience, will need to make a concerted effort as a player to embrace this approach. We will need to deprogram ourselves from the speed of this generation of MMOs. Not only have we been conditioned for a faster experience, also for instant gratification in MMOs. Time invested and value attained have virtually no connection anymore.
This means being in the moment of the game. Talk to your friends, your group, your guild while doing something that takes time (eg. travel) Remember when you were camping a spawn back in EQ? How did we pass the time? So, as is the theme with Pantheon, community is key. I suspect this is the premise that underlies any time scale decisions being in game design.
Correct that is what I am trying to articulate. As we debate our only point of reference are past MMORPGs, but if you reference the current RPGMMOs that don't align to the Pantheon game tenets /philosophy, then we are just spinning our wheels when we debate certain issues. Especially time related issues.
It VR's job to make a slower paced MMMORPG fun. It the players job to keep an open mind when concidering a slower with more depth and social MMORPG can be great. Otherwise you may be barking up the wrong tree.
From a marketing standpoint, I see games touted as having/offering "over 100 hours of gameplay" or the like. And you hear/twitch reviewers that take 60 hours on hard mode or something. Or people saying "yeah, I got 40 hours of gameplay out of it."
Pantheon, Rise of the Fallen... years of gameplay (let the pundits point at EQ, WoW or UO and look for the one with 25 expansions)
Or maybe days instead of hours? to put a twist on it.
*some convention*
Looks at our game, Pantheon RotF!
-how many hours of gameplay can I expect?
We can't say how many hours
-why not? (internet emo/twitch/youtube self-satisfied uber gamer with the race car chair snark rising)
You can't look at Pantheon RoTF in hours of gameplay, you have to look at it in days...*walks away unoffensively serious, earnestly getting somewhere else / or / drops the mic*
- 0_o !!!
*geezers in thbackground "did you have a race car bed as a kid? heh" as they spit on consoles and bivowac their PC towers.*
dorotea said:Few things are as annoying to me as would be getting to a town just after sundown and not being able to do any of the buying, selling, training, getting quests, cashing in quests, etc. that I went there to do for four hours real time until the Pantheon sun rises. I know not everything will shut down but some things will - and Murphy dictates that these will be the things I want most.
Of course that would be annoying, which is why you plan ahead and make sure to be there well before sundown. The other side of the coin is that if you get there in the morning you will have plenty of time to actually carry out all those tasks you mention.
IMO, it wouldn't make much sense to design the content with time-of-day in mind if a full game cycle was much less than 4 real-life hours. Annoying as your example would be, I think it would be much more annoying to begin killing some night creatures just after sundown knowing that they would dissappear after 45 minutes. There needs to be time enough to carry out the mission you're on, allowing for bio breaks and what have you.
Vandraad said:EQ1 had a 1:20 ratio where 1 real minute represented 20 game minutes., or 3 minutes per 1 game hour. So a day was 24 real minutes, 48 real minutes for a full day/night cycle.
Not to be pedantic but... If EQ was 3 minutes per game hour that's 72 minutes per game day.
Personally I'd prefer something closer to 3 hours per day. Ideally 2.5 or 3.5 hours or some other near value that doesn't evenly divide into 24 RL hours. That way if you log in at the same time every day it's a different time of day in-game each time.
Caine said:It VR's job to make a slower paced MMMORPG fun. It the players job to keep an open mind when concidering a slower with more depth and social MMORPG can be great. Otherwise you may be barking up the wrong tree.
To expand on this a bit, I'd say it's VR's job to create a world that isn't *not* fun but it's up to the players to make their own fun in that world. Everyone has their own definition of "fun" but will need a game world that avoids getting in the way of that fun for it to materialize.
~ random thoughts
((Of course that would be annoying, which is why you plan ahead and make sure to be there well before sundown. The other side of the coin is that if you get there in the morning you will have plenty of time to actually carry out all those tasks you mention.))
Certainly - if you know in advance what NPCs are in the town you are going to and what their schedules are. And if travelling is sufficiently predictable. Such will not always be the case. That is why VR is faced with opposing considerations to balance. Getting to a day-oriented town as dusk falls is inconvenient but so is getting to a gloomy forest with rich nighttime activities just as the sun rises.